Dollhouse

This is a weekly discussion of the episodes airing on UK TV. If you have not seen this episode, here be spoilers. If you have seen the entire season, please don’t spoil it for others by talking about future events. Thank you! [It also contains a link to a teaser clip from episode six. Don’t click even remotely near the word "six" if you don’t want to see it.]

The episode opens with Echo on an engagement, wearing loose flowing garments, pulling babies out of hippies on snow covered mountains – but soon, the natural order of things is restored. She’s back in skin tight leather dresses, mostly unbuttoned shirts and thigh-high hooker-boots. Phew, eh?

Though she’s not actually a prostitute, she’s just pretending to be one as part of her real task of the week, which is ...

THE SCOOBY DOO-LLHOUSE ADVENTURE OF THE WEEK!

Echo is a criminal mastermind, brought in to a crack team of other brilliant criminals (though not, apparently, ones made of Doll) who have been hired to steal the Parthenon – or a bit of it – from a vault of stolen art and antiquities. She’s a very Buffy-esque character, introducing her kickass-ness in a monologue that celebrates her relish in what she’s doing and the very practical need to do it in comfortable shoes.

This is all going very well, until one of the crew goes maverick. He steals the stolen thing that they’re meant to be stealing collectively, locks the rest of the crew in the vault, and tries to run off with the goodies. Echo’s handler, Boyd, manages to prevent this ... but not the fact that, while on the phone to Echo, someone hacks the system and remotely wipes her imprint.

And yes, I’m fully aware that the previous sentence makes no sense to non-Dollies. Or, in fact, at all. Never mind.

Once a high-pitched feedback noise scrubs her brain, Echo reverts to her Doll-like state and starts repeating the return-from-engagement script without the right responses to reassure her.

Sierra was imprinted, interestingly, with exactly the same imprint as Echo. As they haven’t had time to reprogram it, it’s an imprint annoyed that she’s being brought in to fix a contract that someone else was awarded instead of her ... but they manage to talk her around by flashing money at her she’ll never see. Sierra talks Echo through the escape, Echo kickasses her way out of there – and basically that’s it.

POP CULTURE-WATCH

"Yes they are breasts and yes they are exceptional. Be sure to mention this when you blog about it later." There. What? It’s a mention of blogging! Pop culture, right there! Although, you know, it would have been pop culture brilliance about five years ago.

OTHER POINTS

• The sound of brain-wiping remotely is strangely reminiscent of an old fashioned modem. Which all goes to prove that the internet robot overlords really HAVE been trying to brainwash us all this time.

• Echo getting hit around the face: once

• Echo hitting someone around the face: once. Come ON, people!

• Why would you hire an active to deliver your baby? Because you want to be the only two people involved? Or because you are secretly delivering old people, or aliens, or inanimate objects, like coffee tables ... or something?

• Topher didn’t know Alpha was still alive, but he does now.

And other than that ... well, nothing. I mean, nothing happened really. It was an interesting heist idea, until the heist fell apart; an interesting Agent Ballard episode, until we realised that not only was the guy feeding him Dollhouse information a fake doll, but he might not have any other leads at all.

Basically, nice Scooby-Doobisode, but increasingly we’re just waiting for that kick in the plot, two weeks from now. And until then, we’re left pondering the main questions – again:

1) Can the premise of superhero whoredom (or superwhoredom heroness) be ethically justified enough to merit a weekly series?

2) Can the overarching-universe plotline develop without weekly missions to prop it up?

3) Can the weekly missions prevail, without the overarching universe to prop it up?

4) For how long can Agent Ballard stay uninformed?

5) How – seriously, HOW – does the Dollhouse maintain its healthy level of word-of-mouth recommendation, when so many of their engagements go so badly, deathly WRONG?

6) I can haz episode six [clip! Spoilers! Maybe!] now please?

I mean, still yay, but ... I’m done with exposition now. I care, but I need to know why I care.